89A: What a "Wheel of Fortune" contestant might buy when looking for _NSP_RAT_ON (AN "I") - the ANI, like the SMEW, is a crosswordese bird OF YORE.On the other, more important hand, SMEW is crosswordese OF YORE and so I was not entirely happy to see it return (I needed every cross-I'd actually forgotten it existed-used to get it confused with its crosswordese cousin SMEE all the time). 87D: Bird of the Baltic ( SMEW) - on the one hand, I am always happy to see more bird names in the grid.well, from where I was sitting, that gamble just did not work out. It's like it was very committed to an idea of *good* that I could not fathom. It's not even that the puzzle was *bad*, exactly. But I have rarely felt like a Sunday puzzle whiffed so bad, on both theme and fill. It's hard to do a Sunday puzzle well-it's hard to do any themed puzzle well, but to have to do it over that much terrain (21x21) is a tall order. But OF YORE!? LOL, man, did I BLINK AT that, for sure. Maybe I'll throw ANNA WINTOUR in there too. I also kinda like ERNIE PYLE, but when your spiciest answer is ERNIE PYLE, it's possible you have a spice problem. where is the joy? Probably the most fun I had during this solve was figuring out how to spell DUMMKOPF (Two "M"s!? Wow, OK!). It gave me nothing in the way of sparkle or pizzazz. and I had to take a deep breath, because it's like the puzzle was deliberately trying my patience. bad since you've already got INOIL in the grid, practically right next door. INATEXT!? LOL what? That is a terrible prepositional phrase, and esp. What's worse than the theme is the fill, which stopped me in my tracks multiple times, so unpleasant was it on the whole. Looking at it, admiring its architecture, maybe. maybe once you finish something software-y happens and you're supposed to ooh and aah at that? I'm just baffled at the idea that solving this would be anyone's idea of a good time. I'm told that the app does the code-breaking for you? Like. well, there are only four of them, and they are cohesive but mostly they just take up space-the bit we're supposed to ooh and aah at is all the code stuff, and it's hard to imagine a more anti-climactic outcome than solving this particular code. Sure, congrats, but from the solver's perspective, there is zero, nada, nothing intriguing about writing in BYSEX or AVERS. And what does it reveal to us? What about it is unexpected or insightful or interesting or Anything? I guess I am supposed to be impressed that the "code" was rendered in the form of eight symmetrically arranged 5-letter words. So many games, all of them with different rules and conventions and everything. "Like any other game!?" Games are different from one another. What a banal and also inaccurate observation. If I didn't have to write this here blog, I guarantee you I would not even have bothered to do the letter-by-letter "decoding" to get to the "hidden" message, which is one of the great non-messages in the history of messages. ![]() ("OVALTINE!? A crummy commercial!? Son of a b-!") Basically I solved the entire puzzle, easily, with no need to decode anything. I honestly can't get my head around the idea that anyone thought this would be "fun" to solve. However, these changes left the ship heavier, compromising the nifty sailing capabilities and manoeuvrability of its earlier racing days.This was grim. In 1536–37, the Mary Rose underwent a major refit, adding extra gun ports and strengthening its sides so it could accommodate extra weight. Read more | Britain’s 10 most significant naval battlesīut even if it was shipshape early in Henry’s reign, this could have changed by the time it reached the battle of the Solent.Perhaps he was flattering Henry VIII, but the Mary Rose’s capability clearly left quite an impression on the admiral. The admiral praised his swift flagship in a subsequent letter to the king, calling it not just “the noblest ship of sail” but “the flower of all ships that ever sailed”. He challenged his fleet to race around the coast of Kent, and despite being almost four miles behind some of the lead vessels at the start, the Mary Rose went on to win. Following a brief stint as a warship, it took an unlikely role as Admiral Edward Howard’s racing yacht in 1513.
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